This course will explore the forces that led to the 9/11 attacks and the policies the United States adopted in response. We will examine the phenomenon of modern terrorism, the development of the al Qai'da ideology, and the process by which individuals radicalize towards violence.

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Week 6: Counterterrorism Before 9/11

This week we’ll examine the three main US political philosophies that underlie the country’s approach to counterterrorism. We’ll look at the beginnings of the US response to this growing threat and how US agencies involved in counterterrorism efforts have adapted over time. Finally, we’ll examine how the US attempted to combat Osama bin Laden’s growing threat to US security.

Impartido por:

David Schanzer

Transcripción

In the prior lecture we took a look at how despite the government's growing knowledge about the emerging threat of terrorism, especially terrorism with relation to weapons of mass destruction our fed, federal agencies were ill equipped at the time of the 9/11 attacks as a matter of policy and a matter of resources to take the kind of steps that would have been necessary to prevent the 9/11 attack. In this lecture, we're going to look at specifically how the, the knowledge of the Al Qaeda threat and Osama bin Laden was growing and there were specific desire to terminate this threat, to eliminate it. but despite that desire we were never able to take specific action that was successful. And therefore failed to stop Bin Laden in the latter years of the, of the 20th century. I want to start with back in 1996. so at that point the CIA really didn't even know exactly who Osama Bin Laden was or about the Al Qaeda network. it was thought that Bin Laden was a merely a terrorist financier. and very little was known about his connections themselves and the, the global reach that this organization was developing. So it started what was called a virtual station to try to gather intelligence and try to better understand the nature of this terrorist enterprise. And, and, and it did. and as more and more awareness of the dangers of Bin laden emerge there's more of a desire for the government to try to take action. and what we're going to do in this lecture is look at a whole range of possible ideas for eliminating the Al Qaeda threat that were percolating within the White House, within the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. and how they were dealt with by the President, by the Interagency, a team and ultimately why decisive action was never taken. The first set of ideas emerging really as early as late 1997, 1998 was that we needed to use what we call covert action to try to deal with Osama bin Laden. covert action would be action taken by the CIA at the specific direction of the President. it would be secret undisclosed and it would involve a series of secret activities leading up to it, that would enable us to execute that particular action. And in this instance the, the, the idea was that we could use Pashtun tribal groups in the southern part of Afghanistan, the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, where Bin Laden was located at the time in 1988 to essentially kidnap him, abduct him and then ultimately bring him back to the United States to face trial. and, and, we would use through the auspices of the CIA, obviously paying these Pashtun tribals to execute this attack. There was training they were, the, the, they practiced routines. There was a lot of work done by the CIA on this action but in the early parts of 1998 it, it never went forward. why? first of all, there was a lot of concern about the the actual plan. would they be able to pull it off? what would it look like? Would there be a lot of gunfire? Would there be a lot of civilian casualties? could we trust this group to take these actions and do them effectively? how long were they going to hold Bin Laden before getting him out to the United States for trial. all of these issues made the government very worried, especially within the White House, it, it was going to be an embarrassment. that it would look if something went wrong, and that Bin Laden was killed, it would look like an assassination attempt. And as far back as the Ford administration political assassinations had been outlawed by executive order. So, all of these concerns put a, a restraint on this covert action plan. a lot changed of course in the middle of 1998, after the, the duel embassy bombings in that took place in August 9th in 1998, in Nairobi, Kenya, and on our embassy in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. It was very clear from intelligence that Al Queda and Bin Laden were behind these attacks which led to the killing of many American State Department officials as well as locals, Kenyans and Tanzanians so working in both of these embassies. so there's a great deal of anger and also a concern about the threat that Bin Laden had now clearly demonstrated. Not only was he declaring war through his fatwas he was taking specific agre, he was willing to act. And he had the capabilities to reach into two countries to do simultaneous devastating bombings. so we were now facing both a capable enemy and who who's willing to act on his violent words. Given the severity of the attacks on our embassies the government very strongly believed that a, a response against Bin Laden was necessary. and fortunately intelligence became available that Bin Laden would actually be at a specific meeting at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and this was an opportunity thought to actually attack him and Al Qaeda. the plan was to launch cruise missiles from a Navy ship in the Indian Ocean. those missiles would cross Pakistan and hit a variety of these these training camps. targets were also identified in the Sudan, and one in particular, a a pharmaceutical plant that it was suspected was being used to manufacture chemical weapons, and had ties to both Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. So these attacks took place the, the missiles crossed Pakistan and did hit these training camps. But it turned out that Bin Laden was not there and, he was not injured in the attack. Appears that approximately 20 people in the camps were killed. one of the missiles went astray in Pakistan and killed some civilians. and that was problematic for our relations with Pakistan and there was a lot of controversy surrounding this, this reprisal. first some allege that President Clinton who was involved in a political scandal at the time, was simply trying to use force to divert attention from his the Monica Lewinsky problems that he was having at the time. some felt that this was in response to such a devastating attack on two of our embassies, an act of war, that this was too little, it was a mere pinprick and people were disappointed with the results. others saw this as a overly aggressive, hostile action by the United States. in recent times, it's hard to conceptualize that. but the attack especially on the Sudanese pharmaceutical plant there was it was indeed a pharmaceutical plant. The evidence for whether it was also being used as as a front for manufacture of chemical weapons was very difficult to prove and we don't have definitive proof to this day. so there was dissatisfaction essentially from all angles. And, there was also a concern that because Pakistan had to be notified when the cruise missiles went over their territory that possibly the Pakistan Intelligence Service which was had very close relations with at least the Taliban and maybe with Al Qaeda at the time had tipped off Bin Laden and that's why the mission was unsuccessful. many in the administration after these first attacks advocated for more. that we given Al Qaeda's growing strength, we needed to hit them harder, to wipe out other training facilities and to continue to send the message that we were determined to destroy this organization. Yet, there was also resistance within the government to this idea. the notion that these training camps were a bunch of jungle gyms and, and mud huts and that we would be sending expensive cruise missiles to destroy essentially nothing. that if we didn't have specific actionable intelligence as to where Bin Laden was we would look silly. and maybe even heighten his stature as the man who was being chased by a super power who was sending million dollar missiles into into dirt huts and jungle gyms. there was concerns about Pakistan as well that even if we had actionable intelligence and then we'd have the same problem with having to launch cruise missiles over Pakistan. and as well concerns that we might the civilian casualties could be caused and that would be a black eye on the United States. So for all these reasons there were no subsequent following attacks after the unsuccessful Tomacraw, Tomahawk cruise missile that took place in response to the embassy bombings. So, what were the other ideas for how we might eliminate the Bin Laden threat. there were certainly diplomatic efforts to do so. So Bin Laden as I mentioned in a prior lecture, had moved from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. And he was essentially there as the guest and being sheltered by the Taliban government, which was a very severe extremist Sunni Sunni government that was promoting strict Islamic practices and very few nations in the world actually had relations with them. The three of them were Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan. so the thought was can we use diplomatic pressure on the Taliban to get the Taliban government to stop it's policy of harboring Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Could we ratchet up the pressure maybe impose costs on the Taliban for doing so? and so a number of avenues were tried. first with our allies the Saudi Arabia, you can see Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State at the time, talking here to the Crown Prince Abdullah. and that was a diplomatic path that had some promise. The, the Saudis told the Taliban very strongly that they wanted Bin Laden to be turned over either to the United States or to them. and they thought they had an agreement from Mullah Omar, the head of the Taliban to do so. but as 1998 proceeded they were told that indeed that was not going to happen. another thought was that Pakistan possibly, its neighbor the neighbor of the Taliban in Afghanistan could also bring pressure to bear to turn over Bin Laden. Pakistan had strong relations with the, the Taliban government. Pakistan saw the Taliban in some ways as a hedge against their greater concern, their rival India. and efforts were made through President Clinton speaking here with Nawaz Sharif, and other diplomatic channels. would Pakistan use its influence to, again, try to get Bin Laden turned over. and Pakistan there's no evidence that Pakistan ever really tried to do that. why? As I said, first of all, Pakistan had much bigger fish to fry. they were much more worried about India. they saw the Taliban as a potential ally against that more severe threat, and so really it wasn't worth it for them to pressure the Taliban. also in terms of the United States, our diplomatic concerns at the time were to try and maintain peace between Pakistan and India. 1998, the period of 1998, 1999 was a, a time of heightened tension between those two countries. And there's actually great concern that these two powers who had recently become nuclear powers might start engaging in hostilities. So while we wanted to use our influence with Pakistan we were also trying to influence Pakistan to lower the, the tensions with India at, at that time. So this could not be the, the full thrust of our diplomacy with Pakistan. throughout this entire period, 1988 to 2000 questions kept arising. can we do a missile strike and, and, hit and kill Bin Laden. and over and over again pieces of intelligence would come up. There would be an idea that we understand where, the whereabouts are of Bin Laden. It would be considered within the intelligence community. It would be considered by what was called the Principles committee. either deputy secretaries, or secretaries of the various key agencies and, and then action would not be taken. sometimes there's deep questions about the credibility of the intelligence. people on the ground, people who were in the Bin Laden unit and others, they kept saying, this is really strong, this is great intel, this is about as good as we're going to get. We've got a good source, we know where Bin Laden's going to be for two days. By the time it was mulled around by the decision makers the head of the CIA would be asked, is this is this good enough? And they'd say things like, well, this is a 50 50 chance. And the the, the, the possibility of failure of the sending cruise missiles and, and not hitting Bin Laden if he was in an area that was heavily populated. cruise missiles leave a very big crater, big imprint, many, many civilian casualties could be caused. so there was a skittishness, a reluctance to do this, based on things that were considered far, far from sure bets about the caliber of the intelligence. So, definitely a disjunction between the people who were charged with looking at Bin Laden and trying to find the intelligence about him to, to eliminate this threat. And those who were responsible for our national security and making the final call, whether they be in the White House, The CIA, or the Interagency committee. another big concern at this time was that in December of 1998, we were responding and bombing Iraq, in response to Saddam Hussein's decision to throw the weapons inspectors out of the country. and in March of 1999 we were working with NATO and starting an air campaign against Serbia for its oppression of Muslims in the Kosovo province. and this was a large conflict and a, important focus of the administration's attention. Unfortunately, during part of the aerial campaign we mistakenly hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade with a missile. So the you can understand in light of that how worried the government was and how hesitant it was to launch an attack based on maybe only partially good intelligence.